7 August 2017
It seems appropriate that Carolyn and I started this trip to Europe in Malta, because our last trip here was four years ago, when we ended in Rhodes, since one of Rhodes’ claims to fame was in January 1523, when the island fell to Suleiman the Magnificent, who allowed the Knights of St. John to leave the island,while keeping their weapons, relics, etc.
Ironically, the Knights ultimately wound up in Malta, contributing to at least two things most associated with Malta: the Maltese Cross and the Maltese Falcon. The Maltese Falcon, perhaps most associated with Dashiell Hammett and Humphrey Bogart, was really part of the history of the Knights and Malta. After wandering around the Mediterranean, seeking territory—anything from Rome to the other properties of King Charles V of Spain, including, at the time Tunis and Algiers, where the Knights helped Charles in his battles against the Turks, the order reluctantly settled on Malta; the price was one hunting falcon a year, hence, the real Maltese Falcon.
Of course, the Knights brought with them the 8-pointed cross of the Order, and their pugnacious disposition to both defend the faith (and incidentally, to do hospital work; the Order started performing medical assistance to the Crusaders and pilgrims to the Holy Land as part of the crusades. The militant medicine men carved quite a niche in the Mediterranean as a self- financed international organization that fed on warfare and (depending on your point of view) piracy, seizing Muslims ships, selling the captives into slavery and confiscating the cargo (a mirror image of what the Turks were doing).
One of the pivotal military points in the battle between Islam (and especially Suleiman) and the West, occurred in 1565, when Suleiman, then an old man, mustered nearly 50,000 of his finest soldiers and determined to put an end to the predators on Malta. The last straw, according to one of the books I read (but not mentioned by our guides), was the Knight’s seizure of one of the personal ships of Suleiman carrying cargo gathered by the harem, including his favorite wife, for sale in Venice.
The western victory marked the apogee of the Ottoman empire. Combined with the loss of the Turkish navy in the battle of Lepanto (to which the Knights contributed ships and men) in 1571, the turn of the Turkish tide had begun.
Thus began about a 250 rule by the Knights of the island of Malta. As you might imagine from the narrative, living in this neighborhood required fortification of the harbor, and one of the distinctive features of Malta even today is the incredible array of fortresses guarding the Grand Harbor in the town named for the grand master during the siege, Valetta. In the period of their rule, perhaps the most stunning building—as you might imagine—is the cathedral of St. John, a magnificent baroque construction distinguished with Caravaggio’s only signed (and largest) painting, the beheading of John the Baptist.
The Knight’s rule came to an end in 1798 when Napoleon landed and conquered the island, ending the rule of the Order, abolishing slavery, and confiscating church property (to help pay for his futile campaign in Egypt (which included the destruction of the French navy at Aboukir Bay). The conquest led to an uprising, which invited Britain to help overturn the French, and at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Britain acquired Malta as a colony; it remained so until 1964, when it became independent. In 2004 it entered the EU as the smallest and least populated country, with about 450000 citizens.
Between the Knights and the British, the island acquired a lot of palaces—the president’s palace, across from the hotel we stayed at, was built by one of the Knights, then became residence of the British governor, and now houses the President of the Republic of Malta. While English was until recently one of the official languages, Maltese (the language of the people) predominates. It has roots in Arabic, as does the country before the 13th century. Indeed, the town of Mdina, another walled city that was the capital of the country, is a medieval fort on a hill; the Knights, being seagoers, sought a city with a harbor, and built Valetta and the other cities on the coast.
The location—“a north African desert with a European civilization’—at the crossroads between East and West and Europe and Africa has made it a potentially important trade entrepot or naval base. For the British, it was the headquarters of the Mediterranean Fleet, important in the 19th century with the development of the Suez Canal, the route to India, and the effort to keep the Russians contained in the Black Sea—not to mention the need for coaling stations.
That location prompted what the Maltese call the “second great siege”—during the second world war. With the entrance of Italy in 1940, Malta began to get bombarded the next day. Astride supply lines to North Africa, it intercepted Axis supplies and thus was subject to bombardment and blockade. The island is limestone, which meant a lot of air raid shelters, some of which were built below existing early Christian and Jewish catacombs. One of the catacombs was a cave where St. Paul was supposedly incarcerated after being shipwrecked on the island and converted folks to Christianity, making Malta (in the Maltese telling) one of the earliest Christian countries (a claim that has to discount almost a thousand years of Arab and other occupation, however; there were several ethnic cleansings).
The Daze comes partly from the beauty of the sea (the land this time of year is hot and dry), and the visit to Hagad Qim, reputedly the oldest free-standing stone building in the world. Archaeologists think it was a temple, around 4000 BC, with fi arrangements rather like Stonehedge or Cahokia, with holes for the equinox and solstice. There were also some interesting statues found, now housed in the archaeology museum, including the “Venus de Malta.” I saw it.
I wonder, as we are about to sail for Sicily, if the ancients would have been ready to predict the solar eclipse later this month. I wouldn’t be surprised…